27th April 2025

It’s 1949 and a Yorkshire police officer in disgrace is sent to a rural station to get him out of the way. But of course he finds more and more intrigue to investigate.

I was expecting something more traditional from this mystery story, and so was surprised by what I got. It doesn’t follow the typical tropes of the genre and lots of things go on that I wasn’t expecting.

The character is annoyingly mysteriously complex. There are a lot of suggestions of incompetence, mixed up with insinuations about previous adventures which suggest anything but. I found him quite frustrating to read about.

The plot felt a bit hard to follow - there was almost too much going on, and I think my expectations that things would develop in a certain way led me to not notice so much the things that were actually happening.

In general, probably not my cup of tea, and I think I’ll steer back in lane and follow more genre-typical mysteries when I need that fix in future.

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26th April 2025

A post-apocalyptic science fiction political romance thriller about a ballet dancer on Mars. What more could you ask?

This is one of those books where the cover alone sold it to me, it sat on my shelf for months, and then when I finally picked it up I loved it so much and wanted more.

It’s so hard to talk about the plot without spoiling anything, but it totally blew away my expectations and kept me surprised throughout. The character is super engaging, the world-building is stunning, there’s so much going on and I could spend so much time in this universe.

And it’s also insightful. There’s a ton of stuff about the human condition, commentary on our real world situations, but without ever feeling like it’s lecturing.

A wonderful book that I enjoyed throughout. I just wanted more!

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19th April 2025

The eleventh numbered Next Generation novel comes from 1990, and somehow has a feel of being science fiction from that era.

It’s a Troi-focussed novel, which does feel like a cool choice for during the series’ airing, and sees her experiencing other-worldly alien visitors to her mind, as well as her visiting a planet where fiction and imagination are entirely outlawed.

It’s a very interesting concept and there’s lots of cool sci-fi around how such a world might work. But I think what I was most interested in were some of the new characters that the author concocted to join the Enterprise crew, including a second blind character to work with LaForge and explore other assistive technology choices of the future.

As a narrative, I found it slightly hard going. The text felt somehow denser than in a 2020s novel, and so it took me longer than expected to get through, without the constant impetus to read that I get with some novels.

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12th April 2025

Carole and Jude get to spend some time in a neighbouring town when Carole decides to take on a beach hut to entertain her granddaughter, not realise its history will provide two mysteries for the perfectly mismatched neighbours to solve.

I enjoy these as very relaxed, low pressure comedy, mystery novels. There’s an element with this one of the crimes in question being possibly more horrific than the series tends to go for, but it’s still kept at fairly arm’s length.

There are perhaps some slightly more political discussions about some of the crimes than usual, and I didn’t find all of the resolutions very satisfying. It leaves a bit of a bitter taste at the end which disappointed me and I felt spoiled what was otherwise a nice visit to Fethering.

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12th April 2025

I bought this book, eventually, after being attracted to the hardback’s cover art on the shop shelves. And picked it to read when I wanted something light, and it delivered.

It’s a sort of coming-of-age story, albeit about a 25 year old, who was adopted as a baby and is starting to research his past through a series of puzzles set by his adoptive mother. Through alternating chapters we see him solving the puzzles, and the history of events leading up to his adoption.

It’s a good fun story, which takes minimal effort to read. The reader can choose to attempt the puzzles or just wait for the characters to get there. In many ways it was the easy read I was looking for.

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5th April 2025

The Hunger Games are back. This time it’s 24 years before the original book, as we meet a teenager called Haymitch, his friends and family, just in time for the fiftieth annual games, in which the 12 districts are punished for whatever rebellion against power happened half a century earlier.

It’s exactly what I think I wanted from a new Hunger Games story. It has all the classic elements, and yet doesn’t feel like a rehash. We get to see some of how the original characters got to be the way they are (quite brutally), and also grow the world building.

I particularly liked how Collins has slipped in some references that fit the 2020s into her world’s past as well, regrounding this as our future, not a random dystopian world.

I’m not sure quite what the message is that Collins wants to put across - I’m happy to have experienced it as a story - but I suspect it’s about resistance to oppression, and not giving up in the face of overwhelming odds.

I feel that it rounds the series out well, adding to the lore without taking anything away. I’m really impressed by how Collins slipped this, and the previous prequel, into her world and has built it out into something complex and totally believable.

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5th April 2025

In an opening not un-reminiscent of the previous book (to the extent that I had to double check I hadn’t already read this one) a retired Rebus learns that one of his regular foes has been attacked at home. This of course is only the start of the classic complex web of interconnected cases, and quite a lot goes on.

I feel a bit like the Rebus soap opera has finally taken centre stage, with the actual plot of the week taking a step back in favour of following the lives of the rich range of characters that Rankin has populated Edinburgh with.

Something about this series continues to grip me, and I do think it really is those characters, their fun interpersonal relationships, how much they are committed to their jobs, and how they continue to work and socialise together like a big family.

I’ve got a mental association now that these are travelling books - I think because they are able to keep me gripped while flying, but also possibly because a lot of flying in my past has been to Scotland, and there’s a thematic connection there.

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